


Years and Years

by brokenmemento



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Happy Ending, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 10:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14669133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Grace doesn’t like mirrors because they reflect, remind, and remove any false pretenses she might have about herself. When Frankie enters, the glass gains a whole new function.





	Years and Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilbexi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbexi/gifts).



> From the Tumblr prompt: "It is cannon Grace has a full length mirror at the end of her bed. So let's see her and Frankie enjoy it.”
> 
> I set up the story in a formatting to honor Jane Fonda’s documentary. (I'm kind of obsessed with her)
> 
> Note 2: vague mentions to drinking, eating issues but not too in depth. Warning for that though.

_Act 1: Childhood_

He is stoic, a quiet yet unnerving figure from the second she’s cognizant of his presence. He commands a room when not a word comes from his mouth. Most shy away from him, defer to him in a cowed manner. But not Grace. She, weirdly, worships the ground he walks on.

While he’s emotionally unavailable, he’s physically accessible where her mother is not. It becomes enough because it has to be. She knows little else from an early age, learns to deal with herself in the increments of value he bestows upon her.

“Oh, look at my little Gracie. Your blue eyes shine like aquamarines crafted by the ocean,” he tells her as he points in the mirror, holding her awkwardly, a thing she fails to see at her young age.

“That blonde hair will turn heads some day,” he smiles, the awe actually reaching his eyes as he examines her in her pigtails and pinafore dress.

“Your long fingers could learn to play the grandest of music and those stout legs could run the mile relay,” he exclaims, his words always tracing the outline, never dipping below the flesh.

The outside holds greater stock than what beats and pulses beneath skin and bones. While she may have won the first grade talent show for creativity or was voted neatest handwriting in school, they never discuss it. It never comes up.

He never tells her he loves her. She accepts this as commonplace. Tells herself that in life, this is the norm.

When she looks at her reflection, she learns to value a look, little else mattering inside a developing vanity.

********

_Act 2: The Teenage Years_

Alcohol is introduced to her in boarding school, a stout and breath seizing whiskey reserved for colds plagued by scratchy throats. It’s love at first sip. When it’s coating her throat and warming her insides, it takes the edge off. Of everything.

At first, it’s an experiment of rebellion. Feeling good to let go, to drop it all and just exist inside a liquored state, it helps Grace forget the glaring inadequacies that inundate her every move.

When they’re in the locker room after P.E., she hears them talking, cackling like hens around grain. They notice her of course, but usually reserve their opinions for moments of absence, where the body they’re verbally destroying doesn’t have the wherewithal to know.

“Mary Sue came back from break without breasts, I noticed. Poor thing. She’s doomed to be flat chested the rest of her life,” Linda smiles. All teeth and venom. Grace can’t, for the life of her, figure out why she’s the one they all gravitate toward.

“And did you see Patricia in home-ec? She couldn’t even get her sewing machine threaded. Can you imagine what kind of wife she’s going to make? Won’t even be able to put a button on a coat,” Deborah says, with a shake of her head.

Because that’s how life is measured in the 1950’s: appearance specifically linked to sex appeal, what social conventions dictates will make an adequate wife. It disgusts Grace to the core.

She’s just removed her work out shirt, only in bra and gym shorts, when she hears something that makes her stop. Leaning against the locker, she doesn’t even feel the coldness of the metal on her skin. She’s already frozen anyway.

“Oh my, Grace too. There’s a little more to look at now, isn’t there? I guess we know what she was doing all summer,” Linda laughs. The rest of the group titters.

By now, her heart is beating rapidly. Her hands grab idly at her waist, pinching a bit of skin between them. The air in the room feels heavy, like it isn’t capable of being breathed. Sounds of them filing out of the room fill her ears but Grace stands immobile for a very long time.

Finally her legs carry her to stand in front of the mirror. She looks at herself.  _Really_  looks. Immediately, she hates what she sees. Linda is right. Her waist is a little fuller and her hips have a more distinctive curve. Her breasts aren’t large but they aren’t small by any standards either, giving her a fuller looking bust line.

Grace feels, in that moment, complete foreign in a body most would be proud of. When she sneaks a sip of brandy in a paper bathroom cup, she doesn’t look in the mirror to see the sadness in her face, only feeling a pathetic sense of self worth deeper than emotions should go.

_***************_

_Act 3: The Wife Project_

Robert was supposed to save her from the meager years of drowning in melancholy. When she meets him, he’s charming in a reserved kind of way. He compliments her good posture, the way she carries herself. Tells her she’s beauty personified. After years of feeling devoid of anything resembling interest or care, it feels like being seen in utter darkness.

Two distinct events happen on her wedding day. First, she stands and admires her reflection in the long, flowing white dress. The lace sleeves hug her arms and the bodice is form fitting on her now tiny waist. Inside her, she feels something close to happiness.

She’s found a husband, despite the cattiness of the girls in her boarding school. A man who tells her she has immaculate bone structure and notices her tanned skin during the summers at the beach. He bestows adoration in bulk and Grace doesn’t think much about it because it’s the best she’s felt in years.

Seeing him waiting for her at the altar, she flashes her brightest smile and hopes for the best.

After the ceremony, they eat, drink and are merry. And married. The night winds down and she knows what comes next, has heard of it so much it’s become a tale of time. It’s the late 50s and people do gossip, even the classiest of girls. While she has a finite amount of knowledge about what’s in store, it evolves nothing like she imagines.

Robert stays in the bedroom while she excuses herself to the bathroom. She slips on the black cupped bra, the high cut lace panties, slides the stockings up her legs. The ensemble accentuates the parts of her she’s worked hard on.

Her hair falls onto her shoulders in delicate waves, makeup a combination of minx and matron. She has the look of something her now husband should enjoy, will want on end for many years to come if she continues to take care of herself.

Finally the mirror shows her a version of herself that she can feel proud of, almost confident in. Her father’s words ring back to her, a small jingle in her head: “That blonde hair will turn heads some day” and the smile attached to the praise. She hopes to turn her husband’s head, to make it spin with passion.

They meet in the sheets, her with a curious vitality and him with a casual indifference. While he penetrates her physically, he doesn’t emotionally and she’s left wondering if this is what all the hubbub was about. Sex has always been talked about in mythic proportions and rather disappointingly, she finds it unrewarding.

What she is yet to know is that it is the first night out of many to come where she will fall asleep feeling unsatisfied and unloved.

**************

_Act 4: Motherhood_

Pregnancy and birth create a double edged sword. She’d like to say she doesn’t understand how Brianna happens, but knows that it only takes once. While her love life may be starving, she makes sure her body does not, switches up the routine because it’s no longer safe to adopt a passive lifestyle in terms of what she lets herself have.

Meticulous and deliberate in her actions, she follows the rules: eats the amount necessary, takes a multivitamin, gets plenty of rest. The only stipulation to motherhood that she isn’t sure she can be successful at, the one that gives her nagging doubt, is the love part.

With everyone so far, the myriads of people in and out of her life, no one has stopped to tell her “This is how to be unconditional, Grace.” Love is supposed to be unending but she’s not sure it’s an emotion that’s been turned toward her for as long as she’s been alive.

The line is long and predictable, beginning with her father. Each strand composed of a bit of humanity that have left her wondering what it is that everyone else is getting.

Brianna enters the world with a piercing scream and the course of Grace’s life is altered forever. A few years later, Mallory adds to the din permeating the walls of their home with perpetual sound. She goes through the motions, does what is required, all while flailing to keep equilibrium.

Her body never lets her forget. She’s heard them called tiger stripes, but she feels more like an antelope or gazelle that’s been torn apart from the inside out. Crunches and sit-ups could number in the infinite and they would never disappear. They’re hers now, tattoos on her skin she will carry for the rest of her time.

She traces the jagged lines, the reddish brown blemishes that create indentions in her skin. The price for a life, of a soul.

Grace would revel in it if she could, but all she sees is imperfection. Of a body that may have been a home, but is not a temple. It’s these thoughts she must reconcile with, learn not to dwell on as she watches Brianna toddle across the floor and Mallory grip her finger when she feeds her a bottle.

The kind words for Grace have fallen silent in Robert’s mouth since they’ve had children. Now, he coos and doles out observations about the changes he sees in his daughters.

“Grace, have you noticed how Brianna’s hair is lightening up? The strands look like rays of sunshine,” he grins as he pats her head.

“I think Mallory’s eyes are going to turn blue. She may wind up with my coloring.”

Robert should know that Grace’s eyes are blue as well, that her genes are just as strong as his. It should be a surprise, but isn’t. He hasn’t looked at her truly in months.

Everything feels numb, like the glaze has been scraped off that kept everything protected. She should love her husband, but she doesn’t really, deeply. She should be wanting to fold herself into the squishy forms of her daughters and hold them tight, but the air is too heavy when they’re both screaming at the top of their lungs.

When Grace passes by the mirror at night, she walks quickly in order to avoid it catching her tears.

************

_Act 5: The Roommate Situation_

Since the beach house and Frankie, life no longer looks like anything she imagined it would be. Her years are winding down, more behind her than ahead of her but she’s oddly content with that. A fact she never thought she’d come to accept.

And maybe in the beginning, when she came to this place, she wasn’t willing to. It was an acceptance learned through scattering then repetition then process. The crazy became normal and life affirming. Through these stacking years, Grace has learned a bit of herself, learned to survive on more than the minimum.

She has also been taught how to love herself. Yes, she sees every flaw with distinguished clarity, notices every insecurity under the microscope like intensity she’s always had for herself. Love though no longer means something above. It also involves the below.

For as long as she remembers, she’s had a relationship with the looking glass that always went the way of a rollercoaster. When she would start to feel near whole and decent, a dip would approach and take her stomach away. The one at the end of her bed was a conundrum for the longest, since most of her life had been spent hating its function, loathing what could be seen.

Now, the reflection could not hold an ounce more beauty if it tried. It mimics back the movements Frankie uses when her fingers track across the expanse of Grace’s body. It reveals places in her naked rawness that she had long forgotten about, but which Frankie takes the time to revel in and point out.

Her breasts look beautiful in Frankie’s hands and seeing her expression sent back to her is an added bonus, an impossibly unmatched turn on that she otherwise would have missed if not for the object near them.

It’s almost like standing outside of herself, being able to follow the rhythm of their love making and to be so undaunted by what might be seen. It’s expression played out in real time, her own often untapped emotions seeping forth as the cool comfort of the bedspread relaxes her and she plants kisses down, down, down Frankie’s body, admires her strong back and hips and bottom being shown to her through the position they are in.

Frankie runs her palm along Grace’s face, brings her hand within millimeters of her mouth. It’s opportunities such as this that Grace can’t ignore, deciding rather quickly to turn her head and catch a passing digit. She grabs, latches on, sucking and running her tongue along Frankie’s soft skin. She captures with promise and intention, non vocally showing the woman in front of her what she wants to do.

Suddenly, she is pulled from her perch atop the covers back up to stand. Frankie turns them so they can watch each other at different angles, can see one another from another perspective. Grace eats air at a staggering gulp when she watches Frankie slip her fingers inside. It’s erotic, watching herself do that same as they begin to please one another.

Wrists are always casualties with this act, but Grace feels she’d sacrifice hers a thousand times over. She will eat ibuprofen in bulk if it means she will continue to feel and see Frankie so completely open for their mutual pleasure.

“I love watching myself do this to you,” Grace whispers amid a pant. It’s dirty and honest and everything that describes their relationship now with one another.

Sex is an act that Grace has learned to be good at. In the past, it was a superficial thing lacking connectivity to much more than physicality. Now? It’s as if the whole of it has been dismantled and repaired, something she can’t believe she’s lived without for so long.

“And here I was thinking this little kink would be a bit much for you. Before, you came across as a prude. You continue to surprise me,” Frankie says with a shake of her head. Which falls back after her sentence because Grace lets her fingers curl.  Now Frankie’s neck is exposed, which Grace can’t help but layer kisses upon.

She moves and moves, lets her thumb rub and circle the bundle of nerves above where her hand is working. It’s everything, the most and best when she decides to glance to her right. Their bodies seem to belong together and Grace wants nothing more than to keep them that way until she expels her last breath.

Feeling audacious, like she cannot go one more second playing a part in her life she never quite feels decent inside of, she removes her hand from Frankie and drags it across the curve of her waist. The other finds her shoulder and backs them up to the bed’s edge, Grace leading the way.

Using her elbows to get situated so that she is on her back, Grace presses her body into the bed and motions Frankie to follow. When Frankie breaks the barrier of the space, Grace makes sure she stays upright and hovering. She uses her hands to guide and pull Frankie toward her, eager to sample and then taste outright. Frankie will complain about her knees tomorrow most likely but hopefully she won’t be on them that long.

When Grace laps at the sweet tang, the mirror plays their coupling like a movie reel.

Hands wrap in her blonde locks which turned the head of one gorgeous and kind hippie. Her long fingers have created and continue to create a delicate harmony with Frankie’s body. She lets her long legs wrap around sturdy knees. Grace’s aquamarine eyes feast upon the person who makes her heart swell beyond reason.

For the first time in her life, Grace knows that this act will be the greatest of all. 


End file.
